Letters to the WSWS

8 September 2001

The following is a selection of recent letters to the WSWS.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am neither a socialist, nor probably particularly “radical” when compared to many who read your publication; nonetheless, I do often read the WSWS for an alternative point of view. I would like to commend you for your in-depth look at the “career” of Jesse Helms. It is a sad comment on the media today when one considers that your small publication offered the most in-depth, lengthy, and thought-provoking analysis of the career of Jesse Helms of any media outlet, whether right-wing, left-wing, or alternative. Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

CA

4 September 2001

“Like scum on a stagnant pond, the rottenest elements in American society rose to the top of the political system during the last quarter of the twentieth century.” [From WSWS article “Jesse Helms to retire from US Senate: a career based on racism, bigotry and contempt for democratic rights”]

I couldn’t have said it better!

SC

4 September 2001

To Patrick Martin:

Thanks so much for telling the truth [re: Jesse Helms]. It’s too bad that most Americans refuse to read what the WSWS offers.

Please continue to bring us the truth—a point of view that is absent from American newspapers.

LL

31 August 2001

“The disappearance of Chandra Levy: how the US media turned a family tragedy into a sex scandal” was an excellent article!

I saw the movie “O” yesterday, and can’t help thinking the two are related. Martin Sheen’s “Duke” character was a quintessential example of the way in which we seem to view young people as vehicles for our own motives rather than as real people having needs and feelings of their own. You’ve pointed out here (among other very important points) how Chandra Levy has become merely a vehicle for a sex scandal, rather than perhaps being a terrified victim of the culture within which she worked, or of the violence which surrounds the nation’s capital.

JB

1 September 2001

The Chandra Levy, Gary Condit matter and “how the US media turned a family tragedy into a sex scandal” is, in my opinion, just another metaphor as to the degradation of our society in pursuit of “the almighty dollar.” Is there any more to be said?

RM

1 September 2001

Thank you for your analysis of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Condit-Levy matter. Given that some 100,000 people disappear every year in this country, it is hard to believe, at first, that this story ever got more than a couple of inches of column print in any major city’s newspaper—especially since there is no conclusive evidence (such as a corpse) that Ms. Levy’s disappearance was the result of foul play.

Of course, Gary Condit is a congressman and he has admitted now to having had an “intimate” relationship with Ms. Levy. You condemn the corporate media’s hawking of the Condit-Levy “affair” as a cynical attempt to divert the public’s attention from real issues. I agree that the coverage has been largely tawdry and lacking in any redeeming merit, but the fact that this story has kept the public’s interest this long—while other more important stories have not—is not entirely the media’s fault. A large feature of American bourgeois culture has always been a furtive obsession with sex, and sexual “scandals” among the “rich and famous.” I don’t think that I need to offer any proof of this assertion.

I realize that there have been occasions when the American press has created public outrage over seemingly far removed (and, as it turns out, non) events—such as the rumors that Iraqi soldiers killed Kuwaiti babies when hauling home hospital incubators as war loot, but this was just the moral outrage Americans needed to justify their country’s going to war to protect “our oil.”

I understand that the mainstream press in this country has an incestuous relationship with its corporate owners and sponsors, and that this relationship determines a lot of what we do and do not hear about, as well as coloring the coverage that stories do receive, but the “bottom line” for the media is which stories and what kind of coverage create revenue flows. Thus it is that we get ceaseless coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case, and the Chandra Levy disappearance.